The archived blog of the Project On Government Oversight (POGO).

Sep 13, 2012

Lockheed Campaign Cash Has Flowed to Members of House Panel Probing F-22 Problems

By JACOB WASHKURAK, JOHN PARKER and BEN FREEMAN

When members of a House subcommittee convene today for a hearing on the troubled F-22 stealth fighter, they’ll have more in common than just an interest in the mysterious symptoms that caused some pilots to declare the plane unsafe to fly earlier this year.

All but one of the 25 subcommittee members have received contributions in the current election cycle from individuals or political action committees associated with Lockheed Martin, the prime contractor on the F-22, according to a Project On Government Oversight (POGO) analysis of data from the Center for Responsive Politics.

The one exception, Pennsylvania Republican Todd R. Platts, is retiring from Congress. In a 2010 op-ed piece, he said that as always his campaign was being funded solely by contributions from individual citizens and that he refused to accept contributions from special-interest groups. There are no records of his ever having accepted any funds from employees of Lockheed Martin during his congressional career, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

The other subcommittee members received between $1,000 and $10,000 each, for a total of $153,250, according to the POGO analysis (see table below).

On average, members of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces have received $6,130 this election cycle from Lockheed employees or political action committees, POGO found.

They weren’t alone.

Of the House’s 435 voting members, 386 received such Lockheed-related contributions, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. However, the average for the subcommittee members exceeded the $4,211 average for all House members by about 46 percent.

Jennifer L. Allen, a Lockheed spokeswoman, told POGO in a statement: “[W]e believe it is critical to have our voice heard on issues that are important to our future.”

Viveca Novak, spokeswoman for the Center for Responsive Politics, said Lockheed’s contributions are typical of corporations that have a stake in congressional decisions.

“This is a classic example of one of the unfortunate realities of our system: Members of various congressional committees depend inordinately on campaign contributions from the very interests they are supposed to be overseeing,” Novak said. "If there are problems with this aircraft, will the actions of the
lawmakers be tempered by the fact that their campaigns are partially
funded by the companies that are making the aircraft?"

Today’s hearing involves one of the Pentagon’s most advanced, expensive, and problem-plagued weapon systems, also known as the Raptor. Titled “F-22 pilot physiological issues,” the hearing focuses on symptoms that temporarily grounded the jet and prompted some pilots to refuse to fly. The symptoms include disorientation that has been compared to oxygen deprivation.

The stakes are high—for the pilots who fly the F-22, for the taxpayers who paid for it, for a nation that may be relying on it, and for all whose reputations are tied to it, from the defense brass who backed the aircraft to the company that built it.

Some analysts question whether the military has gotten to the bottom of the problem, and the hearing will give lawmakers a chance to explore that question.

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta lifted most flight restrictions on the F-22 fleet in July, allowing the planes to resume long-duration flights such as the recent deployment of a squadron to Kadena Air Base in Japan.

The Pentagon says it has identified the roots of the trouble—including a malfunctioning valve and pressure vest—and it says it is fixing them. In the meantime, the Defense Department says the jet is prohibited from flying above a certain altitude so that pilots will not need to wear the vest.

Though the government has stopped ordering F-22s, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney told an interviewer last weekend that he would add more of them.

In the statement to POGO, the Lockheed spokeswoman said the company “supports a wide range of federal, state and local political leaders based on their level of interest and commitment in national security, homeland security, and other issues of importance to the corporation.”

“With 82% of our company’s sales derived from U.S. government customers, we naturally have interactions with virtually every standing committee in the United States Congress who has oversight authority over the budgets and policies of all Federal agencies and by extension the products and services that Lockheed Martin provides to them,” she added.

POGO sought comment from 11 subcommittee members and received responses from representatives for two of them.

Rep. W. Todd Akin (R-Mo.), who is running for a Senate seat, makes decisions about national defense using “careful analysis that wouldn’t be affected by campaign contributions,” spokesman Steve Taylor said.

Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) “is deeply concerned about the safety of our pilots,” and the contributions “have absolutely nothing to do with his responsibility to ensure the safety of our pilots,” spokeswoman Catherine Mortensen said by email.

“The oversight hearing is an opportunity for the Congressman to hold the Air Force and its defense contractors accountable for their safety,” she said.

Name

Lockheed

Party

Michael Turner

$10,000.00

R

Doug Lamborn

$10,000.00

R

Silvestre Reyes

$10,000.00

D

Mike McIntyre

$10,000.00

D

Mark Critz

$10,000.00

D

Martin Heinrich

$9,450.00

D

Jon Runyan

$9,300.00

R

Thomas Rooney

$9,000.00

R

Martha Roby

$9,000.00

R

Roscoe Bartlett

$8,000.00

R

Frank LoBiondo

$7,000.00

R

William Owens

$7,000.00

D

John Fleming

$6,000.00

R

Vicky Hartzler

$6,000.00

R

Bill Shuster

$6,000.00

R

John Garamendi

$6,000.00

D

Walter Jones

$5,000.00

R

Larry Kissell

$5,000.00

D

W. Todd Akin

$2,000.00

R

Joe Wilson

$2,000.00

R

Niki Tsongas

$2,000.00

D

Jackie Speier

$2,000.00

D

Jim Cooper

$1,500.00

D

Kathleen Hochul

$1,000.00

D

Todd Platts

$0.00

R

Total contributions

$153,250.00

Average per committee member

$6,130.00

Average per House member

$4,211.74

Number of committee members who received contributions (out of 25)

24

Number of House members who received contributions (out of 435)

386

Jacob Washkurak and John Parker are journalism interns with the Project On Government Oversight. Ben Freeman is an investigator with the Project On Government Oversight.

Comments

While it can be claimed the a contribution to a PAC is not to the candidate, it is plainly for the purpose of getting the man elected. There are many ways of spending money on congressmen. If I remember right it was Tom Delay who was given a junket to a pacific island and provided with whores, courtesy of an industry group. One was caught living on a boat in Washington which belonged to some government contractor. To me it is all giving money to buy votes, whichever subterfuge is used. The PAC is most certainly an arm of the corporation that funds it. That is the point of a PAC, so large amounts of money can go around what little is left of the regulations.

Crap assurances from another of the military industrial complex's propaganda mouthpieces. Not only do the rob you, then they spend your money blowing sunshine up your ass. Now there's a system we'd never want to change.

The companies do not "control" contributions to PACs any more than unions or universities control the comparable political contribution mechanisms. I can assure you the funds are not corporate--that would be a felony. What you all ought to be more concerned about is the gajillions contributed from company coffers and rich families cosmetically construction 501c3 orgs to candidates--both democrats and rethuglicans. You don't get it. You all seem out of date, and if you forget about the legalities and formalities that make PACs truly separate from corporate treasuries, why bother to honor the distinctions you draw so finely in other POGO broadsides. Stop acting like a bunch of Republicans.

Defense contractor "employee" Political Action Committees are simply another tool by which these companies can bribe elected officials to do their corporate bidding. That's why I don't belong to one. The only people I know who do are company suck ups looking for yet another hand out due to their willingness to comply, which has completely replaced technical capability as a promotion criterion in the defense industry as it exists today. Why should it surprise anyone that a fascist procurement system where the government picks the winners and losers from among private companies should not exibit all of the attributes of fascism including the fanatical support of the chosen.

Mon. Hilzenrath--your rejoinder was rather disappointing because you think, or so it seems, that you have proved that PACs are corporately controlled. But they are not, and you can bet "compliance" enforcers of the company and onsite govt auditors can easily document that.

What you are really upset with is the fact that: the employees of the company indeed, want to support, in this case, the Republican candidates. That may even be true among the stockholders.

No denying the facts you presented, but the real damage being done would be if Lockmart were exercising its rights under the Citizens United decision and contributing gazillions to candidates. Many big companies will not disclose these contributions or where they are targeted. They would be of far larger magnitude than individual PAC totals. So, you have your POGO eye off the ball here.

Interestingly, if you take the trouble to look at the personal contributions of government contractor employees in many large companies Other Than the Big Hardware firms, such as SAIC, you often find a 60-40 split (sometimes Democrats predominate) between the parties.
Also true all over the Fortune 500. Check a few at random.

Most of all, try to remember that our population and voters are pretty closely split 50/50. Even the President refers to this 50/50 condition of the population. This is why national races are close and, more importantly, why Congress cannot get a damn thing done or done smartly.

For your part, Pogo--try not to mangle and maul like Huffington Post and get back to more important things--with some analytical rigor, please.

Thank you for your comment, which prompts us to share some additional context.

We have difficulty seeing much if any daylight between the contributions and the company. Here’s why:

According to data from the Center for Responsive Politics, 24 members of the House Armed Services subcommittee received a total of $152,500 from the Lockheed Martin Employees’ Political Action Committee. In other words, 99.51 percent of the $153,250 we identified in our report came from the PAC rather than from individual Lockheed employees.

The corporate website goes on to say that the PAC’s decisions are made by its board of directors. It lists 11 members of the board, all of whom are executives of the corporation.

The chairman of the board, Greg Dahlberg, is described as the company’s senior vice president for Washington operations.

The treasurer of the PAC is identified as Larry Duncan, Lockheed’s vice president for “Federal and State Government Relations & PAC Affairs, Washington Operations.” An online bio of Duncan says he manages the PAC and “serves as a senior liaison to Federal and State government officials on national defense programs and business issues of importance to the corporation.”

More to the point, when we asked a Lockheed Martin Corporation spokesman for comment on the political contributions, the corporation provided a statement citing its business interests:

“With 82% of our company’s sales derived from U.S. government customers, we naturally have interactions with virtually every standing committee in the United States Congress who has oversight authority over the budgets and policies of all Federal agencies and by extension the products and services that Lockheed Martin provides to them.”

Lockheed told us that it was trying to get politicians’ attention.

“In this environment," the corporation said, "there are many voices being raised, particularly in an election year, and we believe it is critical to have our voice heard on issues that are important to our future.”

Why would POGO go out of its way to use misleading headlines -- and also mangle the "facts" a la Huff Post and other incompetent "news media."

Individual and PAC contributions are not controlled by corporations. They might influence them, but you make them sound like directed, corporate campaign contributions from company coffers. You should know better than to sound like incompetent news media.

Yet you do in this piece. POGO creates another windmill to tilt at--as if there were not a lot of fully legitimate targets that don't need a smelly bracketing to justify your ire.

No one who knows anything about the G-Force/Oxygen situation believes any of what the AF is saying, in particular that they have cured the problem. Supposedly this was done by replacing a defective plastic part inserted in a rubber hose. This replacement had to be done despite the fact that the device has been in use for 10-20 years on other planes- and is not really necessary. The telling fact is that they limited the max altitude at which the plane is allowed to fly, but that kind of limitation can be overridden by "Combat Emergency". No explanation has surfaced to explain why the same "anoxia" problems the aircrews were having are also appearing among the ground crews (who don't wear stylish g-vests or fly over 20K). I can't believe they had the chutzpah to send the F-22 detachment to Japan, especially with the Japanese raising Cain over the transfer of two squadrons of Ospreys. I also wonder how much pressure USAF is applying to its own uniformed troops to "accept" this loser. And now here comes the House, just in case any form of political manipulation might have been overlooked. Sometimes I wish Obama would abandon this lassez-faire attitude toward internal departments and go kick some braided Air Force butt.